LATEST RELEASES

THINGUMABOB AND THE THINGUMAJIGS ~ Last Chance Saloon [The Sessions of March 2017]

AGBEKO ~ Albert's Loss [The Sessions of March 2017]

THE SESSIONS OF MARCH MANIFESTO

We believe independent music captures something special, namely genuine expression free from commercial pressure, and is made because the people making it truly want to!

We believe Manchester's independent music scene like many others is full of amazing talent, and deserves to be celebrated in all its diversity.

We aim to do this by creating collections of music that provide a snapshot of this amazing scene. For us these collections represent at their core why we love music, and more specifically why we love the independent music right on our doorstep.

This includes some out of town bands who have in their own beautiful way contributed to our independent music experience here in Manchester.

Sessions from 2016 collection will be regularly released every Sunday and Wednesday.

THE BEGINNING

This is a project born out of love for a creative community.
The mission is to create amazing collections of independent music, and showcase it together in all of its glorious variety.

During the month of March 2015, a team of people came together to record 80 tracks involving 25 artists. For the last 5 years, the sessions team has been involved in a variety of ways with a music venue in manchester. Some were involved from the beginning, whilst others joined the fun along the way. Those who ran the venue had a strong ethos of respect for local and independent creative people and their artforms. We wanted to create a space where all of the variety of talent they discovered could be showcased alongside each other. There was huge variety in what they put on, and wherever possible, our favorite independent and local music was the forefront of it. The aim was to support the creative community as much as possible, and to unite people under the banner of celebrating creativity in all its forms.

The team constantly evolved and created a successful business with this ethos at the heart of it. However for various reasons, the team had to make the decision to leave the venue in early 2015, taking this ethos with them. When you have put so much into a project it is hard to just walk away from it, therefore the plan was formed to return to the venue for one last project to celebrate and sum up why we did what we did for all those years. Namely; the amazing independent creative community we discovered along the way.

A project was created to record as many of our favorite bands we had discovered in a month's worth of live recordings. The audio was recorded by WR Audio, and the video was filmed and edited by Midnight Sounds / Lion's Den Productions, as these compaines had been involved with the venue for some time. The Sessions of March was organised, funded and photographed by Kris Extance, who had previously been heavily involved with the venue for a number of years as the General Manager.

WHAT HAPPENED NEXT

Due to popular demand from the musicians involved we could not let this project end here. We only managed to capture a small part of the amazing community we became a part of. So we decided to launch a Kickstarter campaign for 2016. In a month we raised about £7500 beating our £6969 goal. We then went straight into the next set of sessions and this time recorded even more bands! We did a total of around 36 separate sessions and a total of over 90 tracks.

THE FUTURE

We are now going to regularly release the 2016 sessions until they are all out there. We are looking for various new means of funding to help us do this again. There are many ways for people to help, whether it be sponsorship, buying some merch or even just spreading the word. We are not looking at doing another massive collection in 2017 due to other commitments. The honest truth is this has been a huge amount of work, and we need more substantial funding to make another massive collection happen. We are looking into this, but in the meantime we still have a fair bit of 2016 music to release for your enjoyment.

We want to continue expanding this unique collection of music that captures why we love the independent music scene so much. We are not in this to make money and this project means the world to so many people. If anything we have lost a lot of money doing this but we would not change that for the world. The team feel truly honoured to be in a position to make such a collection. We hope this will be something hundreds of musicians, and thousands of music lovers look back on with a smile on their faces. So go on help us make it happen :) Any money raised will all go towards the projects continuation and we truly appreciate any help people can offer.

Who knows exactly what the future holds, be we are sure its going to be full of good music. It is our mission to capture as much of this as possible.

THE SESSIONS OF MARCH

A tiny note from Kris
Thankyou to Phil and Margret Extance for putting up with me as a son.
also to Jason Badiozzaman for continually being an indispensable inspiration over the years.
Finally thankyou to Bonita and The Badass for the changes they unknowingly made.